some flexmotion problem

[Falco]

I'm working on a gantry system with a 7344 and i'm using 6.1.3 version of the flexmotion library under vsnet2003.
I have to gear axis 1 and 3 for my Y axis of the gantry system and of course i can gear them. But some problems arise when i want to find home on the Y (axis 1-3) axis. The documentation says that gearing is disabled for this operation so i start a simultaneous move on both axis and then I re-enable the gearing.
If i use the flex_wait_reference etc. with an infinite timeout it doesn't work and it return immediatly. I have tried also other timeout value but it always return immediatly with no error.
Other than this unlinking the two axis to find the home could lead to pericolous movemente because in this case i'm not sure about the sync
of the two axis and they carry a 'portal' on them and i can't destruct it of course... any help?

[Williamjritter]

Hi Falco,
I work with a three axis testing machine using a 7344 and a umi 7664. It has three separate actuators that we run in closed loop mode. We were using the home switches to set the gauge length for our specimens but found that the position resolution that they offered wasn't good enough (around 3 mm) and also sometimes they would miss a switch, which lead to some equipment damage. So we unhooked them. Now we run our machine in absolute position mode (set in NiMax Devices and Interfaces>PCI-7344>Default 7344 Settings>Trajectory Settings>Operation Mode>Absolute Position) and reset the absolute postion of the three axes at zero at our "home position" (which we move the machine to manually) using Reset Position.flx. When we are done with a test we simply
tell the machine to return to zero and it goes to the home position just like it was moving to any other position. I hope this helps. Let me know if you need additional information. Also, if you have a minute, check out my question which is still in the Unanswered Questions bin at NI.

Will Ritter